Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights

Religious freedom and the riots in Alexandria

By Hossam Bahgat

Thursday October 27, 2005

Last Friday evening I stood on Muharram Bey Street in Alexandria, watching the faces of demonstrators and cordoned Central Security troops outside the Mar Girgis church. The opposing ranks swayed back and forth, advancing and retreating in turn. From my position on the pavement I could hear the comments of passers-by, gaggles of onlookers and local shopkeepers (or Muslim shopkeepers, to be precise. Fearing the demonstrators, Copts had chosen to close their shops and stay at home for the day). The sectarian nature of their remarks was terrifying for someone like me, raised in this neighborhood and familiar with its large Christian community. The shock and sadness I felt were matched only by my anger at the foolish security policy that had led to this catastrophic scene.

Leaving aside the direct role of security services in provoking recent events, all who have written on the subject over the last week agree that we are glimpsing the symptoms of a disease that has progressed from sectarian tension to the open confrontations of last Friday.

The issue of conversion underlies nearly all the sectarian incidents that have occurred during the past year—demonstrations protesting the conversion of Christian women to Islam, first in Beheira then in Fayoum; a Christian woman’s house besieged in Ain Shams after a false rumor accusing her of helping a young Muslim woman convert to Christianity; more false rumors about a Christian girl being murdered in Rod Al Farag after converting to Islam; numerous claims that Christian girls were being abducted and forced to convert. And now this: violent demonstrations denouncing a play in which a young Christian converts to Islam before reverting to Christianity.

One need not look too hard to see the pivotal role played by extreme sensitivity over conversion in all these incidents, a sensitivity shared by Muslims and Copts alike. Yet this paranoia is further heightened and inflamed by the security services’ approach to religious matters in general, and cases of conversion in particular.

For the past two years the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights has monitored cases of freedom of belief. Our research clearly shows that to understand recent events, we must examine the security services’ jurisdiction over religious affairs and their treatment of these cases as an issue of national security. Bizarrely, they seem convinced that the best way to prevent sectarian clashes is to forcibly prevent people from converting to the religion of their choice. As a result, an increasing number of Christians who have gone to State Security with certificates of conversion from Al Azhar to register their new status have been denied official recognition as Muslims. Mature, intelligent adults are instead forcibly returned to their families or the Church (and while we’re on the subject, whatever happened to Wafa Konstantin?).

People who have converted to Christianity—even if they’ve been baptized in an Egyptian church—have been detained under the Emergency Law, despite the fact that no law exists forbidding conversion from Islam. Since the Interior Ministry’s Department of Civil Affairs refuses to register converts’ new religion, converts, if they’re not detained, are subject to a form of civil death, denied the right to marry, register their children, inherit assets or receive a pension.

Take the case of the woman who converted to Islam before Al Azhar’s Lagna Al Fatawa (Fatwa Committee) some 19 years ago and was denied a national ID card by the Department of Civil Affairs. Or the department’s refusal to register the reversion to Christianity of a citizen who had previously converted to Islam. This individual had obtained approval for his reversion from the Coptic Patriarchate’s Clerical Council 27 years ago. This absurd attitude on the part of the authorities leads to a conviction on the part of ordinary people that they must fight to the last drop of blood to prevent their coreligionists from leaving the fold. Far from being a personal choice, the decision to change one’s religion is a disaster for the wider community and must be prevented at any cost.

Not content with their utter failure to safeguard the principle of freedom of belief, the security services have used their authority and influence to actively violate this right, obstruct any real efforts to protect it and have, by extension, failed to protect the country from the threat of sectarian conflict.

Take the case of Metwalli Ibrahim Metwalli, a sheikh in his fifties with two degrees from Al Azhar in Islamic Religious Law and Arabic. A few years ago, he authored a research paper in which he applied what he knew of linguistics and jurisprudence, leading him to the conclusion (with which you can agree or disagree) that the commonly held belief that apostasy from Islam was a crime punishable by death was wrong. He based his argument not on secular ideas but on purely Islamic principles, thinking that by so doing he was serving Islam and defending it from ridicule and attack. He made copies of his paper and sent them to Muslim scholars and the embassies of certain Islamic states. Naturally, it didn’t take long for State Security to get hold of a copy. He was arrested and thrown in jail, where he has remained for the last two-and-a-half years without charge or trial. There have been six court orders to release him.

This is just one of many stories highlighting the Ministry of Interior’s role in quashing any attempt to defuse sectarian hatred and replace rationality with blind chauvinism when dealing with religious matters.

This is not to excuse society for its increasing bigotry or claim that the security services are the sole cause of sectarian tension. I have no trouble believing what Bilal Fadl wrote in Al Masri Al Youm last week—that his moderate Alexandrian family won’t buy medicine from a Christian pharmacist. My own highly educated relatives refuse to go to the Christian pharmacy despite the fact that it’s the closest one to our home. But the security services are responsible for heightening sectarian extremism.

There is an article in the Egyptian Penal Code that proscribes punishment for insulting religions (only the “big three,” of course). Yet it’s almost never used for the purpose intended: to strengthen national unity and social harmony. Its sole use is to give the security services a pretext to confiscate cultural materials and arrest and try individuals for their religious beliefs, even when these beliefs don’t threaten any other religious community.

We join those wise individuals calling for religious matters to be removed from the security services’ control and that the issues of freedom of belief and religion be dealt with by a civil state aware of the limits of its authority, which treats its citizens as adults capable of deciding what they believe—even if Ministry of Interior officers don’t like it.

Hossam Bahgat is the director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, an independent human rights organization that defends the right to privacy, including freedom of religion and belief.

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